Hiring for Culture Fit: When was the last time you examined your culture for myths?

Hiring for Culture Fit: When was the last time you examined your culture for myths?

When it comes to hiring new board members, everyone wants the right people on the team. Dozens of resources focus on how to probe a candidate’s qualifications as well as their willingness to make the time commitment. Yet cultural fit often remains a mystery.

Earlier this month, YNPN National began onboarding eight new and talented Board members. Every year we work to improve our board recruitment, onboarding, and engagement. We want the right people on the team, which means we focus on qualifications, motivation, and cultural fit. We talk about our culture openly in our outreach, interviews, and calibration process.

Culture has become a bit of a buzzword lately. The idea of “cultural fit” became popular during the development of organizational psychology in the 1970s, but many myths about organizational culture remain.

As we kick off 2015, let’s take some time to examine a few of the most common myths around hiring board members for cultural fit and how YNPN approaches board culture.

Myth 1: Your mission statement defines your culture.

Mission, values, and vision statements can mirror culture, but organizational culture is based on shared attitudes, unwritten rules, and even traditions developed over time.

At YNPN, we talk consistently and formally about our board’s culture during every board meeting and informally through our internal communications. We talk openly about the behaviors we believe in, model, and articulate externally.

During the recruitment process, we look for leaders who successfully develop collaborative remote relationships, who listen thoughtfully during strategic conversations, and who stay flexible and resilient when uncertainty exists. And we ask directly about these behaviors in our recruiting outreach, interviews, reference conversations, and our candidate calibration. But we also look for endurance, which brings us to our next myth.

Myth 2: Urgency trumps everything.

Many of us have worked in cultures where “bias to action” was encouraged at all costs. Yet often that leads to reactive tactics fueled by adrenaline and shortcuts. The conventional wisdom about interview questions encourages us to ask candidates about working under pressure, making quick decisions, and re-prioritizing goals on the fly.

We see things differently at YNPN. We want someone to articulate a passion for our mission that translates into a strategic sense of urgency. In addition to urgency, expanding our national movement requires endurance. Endurance is inconvenient when you’re focused on short-term goals and quick turnaround, but a strategic sense of urgency for our mission that prizes being around for the long haul is what will sustain us through the ever-changing challenges we face.

Myth 3: Teammates who fit will hit the ground running.

In many industries and organizations, leaders prioritize “hiring for fit” so that new employees immediately impact short-term financial results. Investing in anything but a short onboarding is seen as low ROI. I often hear from managers who argue that when you hire for fit, you can speed through onboarding and move to revenue generation.

And as on any strong board, YNPN National Board members are responsible for growing revenue and supporting financial sustainability. Rather than speed through onboarding, we are intentional about our new board members’ First 90 Days. We create space for new relationships to form, both with peers and with Board leadership, and for the content and format of each new board member’s engagement to take shape. We believe that this is how we’ll maximize the value of each board member’s unique contributions.

Myth 4: Ask a candidate about her idea of an ideal culture.

“Describe the working environment that enables you to work at your best,” is a commonly recommended question to probe for culture fit. The thinking is that people who describe something similar to your existing way of working are a good cultural fit. But evaluating candidates in this way can lead you to select people who might not be able to bring fresh perspectives that will help keep your culture healthy.

At YNPN we’d rather hear about what stops you from performing at your best, or what teammates can do to hold you accountable when you’re feeling overwhelmed. A successful culture can encourage people to work together across differences in preference and style. Which brings us to our final myth...

Myth 5: Board culture is one-size-fits all.

We aim to tell board applicants who we are and what it’s honestly like to work alongside us, but we must balance fresh perspectives with existing board culture.

Why? Because we look for people whose primary motive is to advance our mission and sometimes that requires changing and adapting. Great leaders are learners and listeners, and as we strive to lead this crucial national movement, we surely have many more organizational myths to bust along the way.

What are some myths (and truths) about organizational culture that you’ve seen?

Kate Capossela, Board Development Committee Chair

Kate Capossela, MBA serves on the YNPN National Board, where she leads the Board Development Committee, which oversees several board functions, including recruitment. She is a passionate advocate for strengthening nonprofit management, especially talent development, and she has served in leadership roles at national nonprofits, grassroots organizations, and the private sector. She lives in San Francisco. If you're interested in exploring organizational culture further, Kate recommends The Psychology of Behavior at Work